NBA One Guy (the East!), a Man City Punishment Primer, and Tom Cruise’s Bomb With J. Kyle Mann, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

Bill Simmons (0:00)

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The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables. On Monday night, we did Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We're gonna do some horror movies this month. Friday the 13th is gonna be next week, by the way. So I don't know if we're gonna do all horror movies, but at least we're doing two and maybe some more. Who knows? So that's happening. Don't forget the What Chaos Podcast that we added. If you love NHL, please go check that out and check out Jessalynic Book Club. Those were the two latest pods. We have a bunch of basketball podcast stuff as well. We also have some written stuff that we've added with our relationship with Substack. Tom Palacero, we talked about the sweep. Brian Curtis launched his Substack finally this week. It is called Now They Tell Us. I thought the first installment was fantastic. He's gonna be covering all types of sports media topics. So if you love the press box, please go check out Brian Curtis and his new endeavor. Coming up on this podcast, J. Kyle Mann and I are gonna go through the East and talk about one guy from every team that we're particularly fascinated by.

And then Chris Ryan and Van Lathan were here because we did the Friday 13th rewatchables together.

And Chris wanted to give us a book report on what's happening with this Man City situation, which is the single most fascinating suspension situation probably in the history of professional sports leagues. So we talked about that. We talked about Tom Cruise and we talked about the Cable Star Hall of Fame were the three topics for that. So that's all coming up next. We're going to take a break. Pearl Jam and then Kyle Mann talking some moves.

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All right. J. Kyle Mann is here. He pops on this podcast a bunch during the NBA season. You can also hear him on the Ringer NBA show, and he does some video stuff for us too. And he loves rookies. And he loves college guys. Which rookie, if I gave you AJ, Caleb, Boozer, and Peterson, now that we're within like less than three weeks to the season, which one are you the most excited to see?

Combining where you felt before the draft, what happened in the draft, where they went to, and then all the buzz and all the stuff you're reading as we head into October 21st here.

J. Kyle Mann (3:39)

Gosh, it's just, there's a flavor. It's a real Baskin-Robbins situation where if you catch me in the right mood, I could just give you any of these guys. I'm excited for kind of different reasons. I mean, Caleb Wilson is gonna have, like we've talked to you and I a lot about this. I mean, he's gonna probably win Twitter the most often, I think. There's gonna be many of those like Blake Griffin-y rookie year type moments where we're just like, did you see what he just did?

Peterson will get hot, DeBonce will have his moments. I think I'd probably still just go Boozer. I know that's the boring answer and he may be perceived as boring, but I think if you even watched him in the preseason game last night against the Hawks, he's trimmed his body down. He immediately was just doing winning, cam Boozer type of things. And so I'll stick with that one because I had him number one at the end of the college season.

Bill Simmons (4:32)

So you came to the LA office and you did a whole bunch of group chats with Mahoney and Varier. And I actually was in the office and I just crashed your Memphis and New Orleans section. So the pod I don't think it's gone up with. All of us love Memphis for being better than, I think on Fandl they're 29 and a half. And I think the biggest reason is just Boozer seems like he's gonna come in right away and be a 19 and 10 guy. I'm the most excited for Caleb just cause of I think for the first month of league pass. I kind of know what Boozer is as much as I'm gonna enjoy watching that Memphis team and their identity. Peterson I think will be hit or miss. There's gonna be games you catch them on the right night. And you're like, oh my God, we haven't had a two guard like this since forever.